Reading Conduit with Tetman Callis and Gordon Lish
As Associate Editor of the best literary magazine out there, Conduit, I am frequently met at my front door by a box of poetry and fiction submissions. It is my job to fairly ruthlessly cut a box of a hundred or so submissions down to the best ten or twenty, and then pass them up the editorial chain of command. This process is meaningful to me in myriad ways, and I may, on occasion, use this blog as a space to work through observations that arise out of editing for Conduit.
Last week, I worked through a box of submisisons in four work sessions--reading about 25 submissions in each two-to-three-hour sitting. I try to work quickly but carefully, to remain open to my own interests as I work, and to allow myself to pursue tangential energies as they arise. For example, I often find people's cover letters interesting, and I might take a moment to look up the website of a writer whose personality strikes me in some way. Last week, a short story submitted by a writer named Tetman Callis really amused me. I mean, I really liked the story's quirky but well-directed energy, so much so that I wanted to find out who this writer was--Tetman Callis (those of us writing with lame-ass names like "Bill" are inevitably drawn toward the aura of cool-name writers).
So I put Tetman's story in the "yes" pile (meaning it goes further up the editorial chain), and commenced googling. I found a gem. Tetman Callis's website includes a sequence of notes, edited and condensed, taken by Mr. Callis in a 1990 master class on fiction writing given by renowned editor, Gordon Lish (think Esquire, Knopf, Capote, DeLillo, Ford, etc.). "The Gordon Lish Notes" are epigrammatic--fragmented observations about writing that would make a great daily calendar, really. Some of Lish's aphorisms are simple: "build your story like you're stacking blocks." Others are complex reflections on form, psychology, language, etc. For instance,
"'Always stay on the surface of your object.' If you dive under the surface, you lose momentum, you loose the bond of understanding you assume with your reader, which bond is that of harmonious prelingual love. 'Many, many ills await the writer who goes under the surface.' We live in a time when what lies beneath surfaces must remain essentially unknown to us."
Provocative thoughts like these resonate throughout the sequence of notes. What could Lish mean, here? We don't understand ourselves? Have we lost touch with a deeper sense of intuition or purpose? Are we impoverished? Or is our surface condition rich, observant, satisfactory? Perhaps most importantly for a writer, how might an observation like this one drive a story? In our own work, is there a character whose relationship to surface and depth might be usefully re-thought? Could we develop plot around this character's attempts to encounter depth, or along the route of his surface explorations?
Really, Tetman Callis's "Gordon Lish Notes" are worth a look for any writer or artist interested in experience, artistic form, the nature of an artist's interaction with the world.
And yes, Conduit is now accepting submissions. See the website for guidelines. http://www.conduit.org/.
Last week, I worked through a box of submisisons in four work sessions--reading about 25 submissions in each two-to-three-hour sitting. I try to work quickly but carefully, to remain open to my own interests as I work, and to allow myself to pursue tangential energies as they arise. For example, I often find people's cover letters interesting, and I might take a moment to look up the website of a writer whose personality strikes me in some way. Last week, a short story submitted by a writer named Tetman Callis really amused me. I mean, I really liked the story's quirky but well-directed energy, so much so that I wanted to find out who this writer was--Tetman Callis (those of us writing with lame-ass names like "Bill" are inevitably drawn toward the aura of cool-name writers).
So I put Tetman's story in the "yes" pile (meaning it goes further up the editorial chain), and commenced googling. I found a gem. Tetman Callis's website includes a sequence of notes, edited and condensed, taken by Mr. Callis in a 1990 master class on fiction writing given by renowned editor, Gordon Lish (think Esquire, Knopf, Capote, DeLillo, Ford, etc.). "The Gordon Lish Notes" are epigrammatic--fragmented observations about writing that would make a great daily calendar, really. Some of Lish's aphorisms are simple: "build your story like you're stacking blocks." Others are complex reflections on form, psychology, language, etc. For instance,
"'Always stay on the surface of your object.' If you dive under the surface, you lose momentum, you loose the bond of understanding you assume with your reader, which bond is that of harmonious prelingual love. 'Many, many ills await the writer who goes under the surface.' We live in a time when what lies beneath surfaces must remain essentially unknown to us."
Provocative thoughts like these resonate throughout the sequence of notes. What could Lish mean, here? We don't understand ourselves? Have we lost touch with a deeper sense of intuition or purpose? Are we impoverished? Or is our surface condition rich, observant, satisfactory? Perhaps most importantly for a writer, how might an observation like this one drive a story? In our own work, is there a character whose relationship to surface and depth might be usefully re-thought? Could we develop plot around this character's attempts to encounter depth, or along the route of his surface explorations?
Really, Tetman Callis's "Gordon Lish Notes" are worth a look for any writer or artist interested in experience, artistic form, the nature of an artist's interaction with the world.
And yes, Conduit is now accepting submissions. See the website for guidelines. http://www.conduit.org/.
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